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Quantum, Explained

2 published posts.

How you calibrate a qubit

A caesium atom comes with its frequency fixed by nature. A transmon's frequency is whatever the cleanroom produced, and it drifts. Four experiments, invented for atoms and nuclei long before anyone built an artificial atom, turn a patch of aluminium into something you can program: Rabi, T1, Ramsey and echo. What each one measures, what the fits mean, and why the job is never finished.

Quantum

What a transmon actually is

Most pictures of a qubit show a glowing particle. The qubits inside Google's and IBM's machines are circuits you can see under an ordinary microscope. How a capacitor and one strange junction make an artificial atom, why it has to be big and boring, and why it needs a fridge colder than space.

Quantum